But while Garriga and other Catalans have been suffering water shortages in recent years, there’s one group of people that appears to be immune, and even profits from them: the multinational companies extracting millions of litres of water from the very same land. This isn’t just a Spanish issue – across the world, from Uruguay to Mexico, Canada to the UK, many have begun to question whether private corporations should be allowed to siphon off a vital public resource, then sell it back to citizens as bottled water.
The tragedy in Spain makes the country one of the canaries in the coalmine when it comes to understanding the global threat to water security. Can the growing number of angry citizens surrounded by private water plants but left without safe water in their homes force a rethink of how this resource is managed? And as weather patterns change, should private companies continue to have easy access to vital reserves of underground water?
Spain being a first world country in Europe no less, might be able to litigate or legislate their way out of this without much bloodshed. It’ll be the smaller and less well off countries that we’ll unfortunately see violence erupt because the government would be in the pocket of the corporations.